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Gujarat Goblin And The Sikh Scapegoat

Like a piece of ice
on a hot stove,those who heeded a national calling must now stew in
their own melting. Ask the sikh farmers of
Kutch in Gujarat what it feels like to be invited and lionized one
moment and shunned and gunned the
other. And therein lies a pathetic tale of
an indifferent state and a
leadership which continues to play political poker with persevering Punjabis
who chose to make the inhospitable Kutch their home.

Loria, a small rural
inhabitation in Kutch was in the news
recently when two sikh landowning farmers were attacked.Unknown to
them,their land was being surveyed by a private but government authorized surveyor. When they reached post-haste to
enquire they were attacked by a mob led by a local BJP leader and injured, a
published news report said. While the attackers complaint was taken, the police
was reluctant to register an FIR on behalf of the victims.It took prodding from
a member of the Minority Commission before the cops relented but nevertheless
ensured a cross-complaint. Loria,is just
15 kms from the district headquarters of Bhuj.

Kutch in 1964 was not the big business paradise that it is
in the post-earthquake today.In 1964 it was a salt flat rann bordering
Pakistan,the second largest district in the country after Ladakh where nothing grew.It was the harshest possible
place to live with cattle outnumbering humans and they would also flee
in summer.Water was the most precious commodity and land
in the far flung saltflats went abegging even at Rs 1000 an acre.Today
you may not even get it at Rs 20 lakhs for
the same size.

It was Kutch which
faced the first Pakistani attack in
1964, a precursor to the 1965 war.It was in the aftermath of the 1965
attack, that the move to settle
battle hardy sikh farmers/ex-servicemen from Punjab in the border areas
of Kutch was taken.They were invited by the government and given
what was virtually non tillable land to farm. It goes to the credit of
these patriotic Indians that they rose to the challenge and over the years
turned the land into a prized and
valuable agri-resource and granary. It goes to their credit that they freely
imparted the same agricultural expertise
to the locals. Over time more people from
Punjab and Haryana joined in and there was complete bonhomie .In fact the
aftermath of the 2001 earthquake saw some remarkable examples of camaraderie. People from Punjab and
Haryana came in large numbers to set up
relief camps in the immediate aftermath of the temblor.

However the rapid
industrialization that followed goaded by the central package of
incentives changed things.
Industrialisation made land expensive and agricultural land still
dearer.Suddenly the pioneer settler was not so welcome.And the parochial politics pursued by the Narendra Modi government which
ruled the state for over 12 years only
widened the divide.Things began to change as the price of land rose by leaps
and bounds.The BJP government added fuel to fire as the administration moved to
dispossess sikh and Punjabi farmers
through a plethora of administrative measures.

According to sikh farmers of the 440 acres of land allotted
to them,300 acres has already been taken over by the government while other
small blocks are being fraudulently registered in the name of locals.In October
last year four sikh farmers were injured in an assault and
the name of the BJP legislator Vasan Ahir had figured in it.

Interestingly, the
dispossessed sikh farmers had knocked the doors of the Gujarat High
Court against the government move and
won the case but the then Modi government in the state went in
appeal before the Supreme Court. Theproblems of the Sikh farmers in BJP led Gujarat are finding strong echoes in Punjab where it’s
associate, the Shiromani Akali Dal government has to weather the attack of an
aggressive Congress opposition.

Both during the
Gujarat Vidhan Sabha elections of 2012 and
the general elections-2014,Modi had made
a lot of mollifying sounds even
roping in the veteran Prakash singh
Badal and promising to sort out the
matter but once the polls were over, the government is back to it’s victimizing
ways with local politics getting the better of
humane considerations.Rajinder Kaur Bhattal,Punjab Congress leader has already gone on record to term it
unfortunate and shameful on the part of the Modi government at the
centre and the BJP government in Gujarat for the targeting of sikh farmers.

At one point of time
last year when the North
American Punjab Association(NAPA) wrote to US President Barack Obama and
senators against granting visa to the Gujarat
chief minister, Narendra Modi, he had
reached out to Badal and flatly denied that the state
government had created any pressure on
the sikh farmers . He had then sought to
politicize the issue terming it as a politically motivated and the handiwork of vested interests. Modi
had then termed it as a fall out of the
Act brought about by the Congress half a century back and a government
resolution of 1973. He took shelter under the point that the matter was pending before the Supreme Court.

Interestingly sikh cultivators who made Kutch their home
over half a century ago when the entire
area bordering the rann and Pakistan was a water starved barren stretch,had never faced
any problem all these years. It was only four years ago after
agricultural land prices shot up manifold that the Gujarat government ordered a
‘freeze’ of their land under the provisions of the Bombay Tenancy and
Agricultural Lands Act,1958 barring them from selling,buying or taking any
loans or subsidy on their land.

The government,in a move to dispossess them of their agricultural land rights
stopped issuing certified copies of their land records. The farmers challenged
the order in the Gujarat High Court and
won their case.The matter now rests before the apex court.In the meantime,Modi,however
has moved on but the last has not been heard in the matter and the ghost of the
Kutch Sikh farmers issue will haunt
Modi’s BJP in the next vidhan sabha elections in Punjab!

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R.K. Misra is a field journalist with over forty years of experience working for some of the top news publications in India and abroad. Presently the Roving editor of The Free Press Journal of Mumbai, he is also the State Correspondent of the New York based international news agency, Associated Press (AP), news dailies Hitavada of Nagpur, Daily Post of Chandigarh and Outlook magazine of Delhi , to name a few. Beginning his professional career with The Times of India in Ahmedabad, he has worked as Senior Assistant Editor with Probe India and it’s sister hindi publication ‘Maya’ in Delhi and as Special Correspondent and later Roving Editor of The Pioneer and the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS). Specialising in cross-country coverage of conflict areas like Punjab and Kashmir at the height of militancy , he has also done stints for the Gulf News of Dubai and the Arab News of Saudi Arabia besides the Tribune of Chandigarh, and Vijay Times of Bangalore. His specialization, however remains, Gujarat. He is presently based in Gandhinagar, the state capital of Gujarat.